


Damn The Mission

by carloabay



Category: Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Deaf Clint Barton, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-09
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23567389
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carloabay/pseuds/carloabay
Summary: When Agent Barton decides that the kid-assassin is wasted on trying to kill him.
Relationships: Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov
Kudos: 23





	Damn The Mission

**Author's Note:**

> I'm like the 50000th person to have done this i know, lmao
> 
> I tried to write Deaf!Clint and I'm so sorry in advance if I did it embarrassingly wrong: I tried my best to describe ASL signs.
> 
> Feel free to comment if I've messed it up a bit (or a lot), I'm not deaf or HOH. Mostly I tried to base with a couple of things I read that did it really well. I hope I did it justice?

It was supposed to be simple. It was supposed to be a non-contact, target-in-sights, take-the-shot-from-afar op. Standard, easy, done a hundred times before. Literally his trademark mission. In short terms, Clint is an idiot.

 _Story of my life,_ Clint thinks. And, _God, I miss my coffee machine._ He got up at four in the morning to get on the jet. Not good life decisions.

A shadow flickers on the floor beside him and his body twists, muscle memory of reactions built in. There's nothing there, but it jerks him back to his forethoughts. What were those again? Oh, yeah. He's fucked up. He had his sights on her, fixed. On the target. The _mission._ The Black Widow, assassin, murderer, liar, thief, criminal. He had the shot. Didn't goddamned well take it, 'cuz he laid eyes on her and couldn't. Coulson's gonna be pissed. 

But he couldn't. He’d seen the flash of red hair, zeroed in on it with the scope. ID'd her. 

“That’s her,” he’d muttered, to no one in particular. It was a silent op, which meant no comms. It was dirty and underhanded, in an attempt to take her by surprise. He'd squinted a bit more, tracked her graceful weave through the swell of the crowd. Tightened his finger on the trigger.

Then he’d hesitated. 

Because she was _young_.

Eighteen, nineteen. 

Small and unassuming.

But that, Clint supposes, is what makes her so dangerous. That is what causes the hesitation, and the hesitation costs him a lot.

She disappears. Poof.

"Aw, no," Clint groans under his breath. He scans the area around where she had been. Nothing. He huffs and puffs and tries not to panic. Coulson's gonna be pissed. Pissed as a slapped bull. Clint scans again, taking his finger from the trigger in case he accidentally shoots someone. Which honestly wouldn't be the worst mistake he's ever made on a mission, but still. He thinks about giving up on the sniper position. She'd been going this way. He could slip out into the streets, take her out with a quiet knife. Yeah, it's not his speciality, and yeah it's not exactly following orders to the _letter_ , and yeah she's an infamous assassin, and _yeah that's a terrible idea._ Besides, if he can't bring himself to shoot his target from four hundred yards because she looks like a kid, how's he gonna slit her throat?

Is she a kid? No one has much on her. S.H.I.E.L.D barely even had her face in her file. Just her body count and a gap of evidence. She's damn terrifying for a kid. 

Yeah, she's really gone. Clint pulls away from the scope and starts to disassemble the weapon, pack it away as quick as he can. Mission's not over yet. Not if he has anything to say about it. Once it's all away, he gives himself a little slap. A pull-it-together slap. A she's-murdered-hundreds slap. A get-your-ass-in-gear-Barton slap. He leaves the room with his recurve bow and a pocketful of arrows and a handgun and a Bowie knife and a proper S.H.I.E.L.D special operative mindset. Aim, loose, kill.

He rides the curving banister down ten floors to avoid making noise on the stairs. And 'cuz he likes it. He passes no one. The building hasn't been lived in for eight years, so that's no surprise. That's also partly why he picked it for a vantage point.

He takes the back door out into the street behind, the one the back apartments and the ground garden looks onto. Not so much of a street as a sunny alley filled with garbage.

 _Just like home,_ he thinks. He thinks of Lucky. Hopes Next-Door-Tori remembered to feed the dumb animal. 

He creeps into the ground garden, crouches his way through waist-high weeds with the walk he uses to move through jungle vines, whenever there comes a need. He gets to the crooked, grass-choked fence and lowers himself to his stomach. The lower grasses are tickling his chin. Reaches for his bow, pushes the end against his foot, bend, bend, bend. He hooks the bowstring over the notch on the end. He rises seamlessly to one knee and chances a quick look through a jagged hole in the fence. A splinter scrapes his eyelashes. Just a sunny alley full of garbage. Clint's not fooled. Sometimes he is, but not today. She knew she was being watched. She knew he would come down. She's looking for him, too. Just a matter of Hide and Seek, where no one's really sure what the hell is going on. 

_Just another normal day,_ Clint thinks with growing gloom. The silence and sun continues. A little beetle chews on his trousers. It's warm, but not drowsy. Clint doubts he could feel drowsy anyways, what with him and a master assassin stalking each other in circles, round and-- KABLAM!

Somehow, somehow he knows, and he throws himself face-flat into the warm soil, the fence exploding into chunks above his head, littering him with debris. His left hearing aid is buzzing with the noise and he starts to crawl almost as soon as he hits the ground, head right down, his bow catching on the weeds. 

_Sorry, bow,_ he thinks. Come on, Barton. Faster. The kid assassin is gonna getcha.

BANG! 

The shot sears so close to the back of his head that it burns him and he crawls even faster, digging his handgun from its holster. He finds cover, finally, an upended kids climbing wall, gets his breath under control, tries to figure the trajectory and distance of the girl he's supposed to have shot by now. His hearing aid is still buzzing and he slaps it, twice. No difference. He growls, then focuses on the two holes in the fence. Gotta be at least ten metres. Fired from a little higher up. He digs the mirror from his pocket and pushes it tentatively around the edge of the wall, tilting, tilting…

"There y'are," he whispers. Ground floor, middle window. 

CRACK! The mirror shatters in his hand and a sharp pain slices through his hand. Clint drops the shards and manages, just about, not to yell in pain. The shards glitter in the grass and he tucks his hand into his stomach, squeezing his lips together. The impact must've fractured or broken something. Through a haze of aches, he allows a little admiration, 'cuz _damn_ that was some shot. A tiny mirror, instead of his large fingers? She's playing with him. And he's not having fun.

Clint tests the string of his bow, still crouched behind the wall. All good. He picks a few strands of grass from it and pouts. The Black Widow fires a warning shot, one that clips the wall above his head. Usually after a warning shot, the oppo will follow up with a grenade or a rocket. He's not sure she's packing a rocket under that sweater, but she's sure surprised him before, so he'd better get an arrow in before she has the time to set anything like that up. He nocks an arrow, curls the three fingers around the string. Man, this feels good. He hasn't been using his bow for the last few missions. 

_Good to have you with me, buddy._

He stands, draws, aims, looses, crouches, all in less than a second, and the speed, the work, the calculation, all gives him a little thrill. Even after years of this, he's still in love with it.

BOOM.

The arrow hits the mark and blows that room on the bottom floor practically inside out.

_Great shot, Hawkeye._

He stands, careful. Another arrow nocked. Jungle-walk, back towards the building. Black smoke billows from the room's window, he curls around the tension of the bowstring again. Both of them, wound tight, ready for drawing and springing and flying and fighting. Kate teases him that he's _one with the bow_. Every time she does, he grins and thinks how right she is.

Still no sign of the kid-assassin. Still that buzzing in his aid. If he could, he'd pause and slap it still it started behaving. He can't, obviously. He steps in through the back door, bow up, arrow pointing at the cracked wall that hides a ruined room and a hopefully (hopefully?) dead kid-assassin. He's _gotta_ stop calling her that. Not a kid. A murderer. Not a kid not a kid not a kid. Murderer murderer. Target. 

The doorway to the room is emitting smoke, too. It looks like it's about to fall in. It won't. He shot the right curve of flight that the building foundations won't be damaged. He doesn't wanna step into the smoky room with the dead assassin. He doesn't wanna shoot a kid. He _wants_ a sandwich.

 _"We can't always get what we want, Barton,"_ Commander Hill snaps in his head.

She lunges at him out of the smoke like a tiny, snarling, feral spirit and he twists and looses the arrow. It whistles past her and lodges in the wall and she kicks out at his knee and slices for his eyes with a knife in the same damn second. He throws himself backwards, rolls on one shoulder in the rubble, comes up on one knee. Nock, draw, aim, calculate, shoo- 

She brings the knife in an arc and slices his beautiful, sleek arrow in half. The string snaps forward on nothing and the arrow clatters in pieces on the floor. Okay. Okay. Maybe this mission won't be too hard after all. Clint abandons his poor arrow and his bow, snatches the Bowie knife from its sheath. Upward slice, left slash, block, block, block, block-- damn, she's got him up against a wall, damn she's hella fast, damn damn damn. Use your weight. She gets close, he locks the knife hilts together and forces them away, jumps at her and then both go down. Not his most graceful moment, he'll admit, but she's pinned now. Nope, apparently not. She hooks a leg around his waist, manages to roll them and it turns into a triangle choke and now somehow?! he's on his knees, dying of asphyxiation, and she's slamming brunt kicks into his tailbone with her free foot. Ouch, ouch. His right hearing aid slips out of place and this is bad, so bad. Buzzing in one ear, almost nothing in the other. But he doesn't need his ears to win a fight. Sure, they're nice, but he's never needed them.

He manages to get to his feet, she's hanging on in the air behind him and she's so light. He tips his head forwards, momentum brings him forward and he rolls. It could have broken his neck, but instead it breaks her hold and she goes tumbling away, a ball of fine-boned, muscle-honed killing machine.

Clint staggers to his feet, snatches up both knives, stalks her down. She must have hit her head, because she's dazed and struggling to stand. He kicks her onto her back, prepares to close the mission. One to the throat, one to the thigh, last to the heart. S.H.I.E.L.D special operative mindset. Kill the target. She's breathing shallowly, he can see. Her chest is rising and falling quick, quick. She drags herself backwards, says something. It bubbles through his left ear, barely. He doesn't understand it. Russian? She says something else, holds up a hand. He keeps coming. Come on, Barton. Finish the mission. Finish _her_. 

_She's mind-blowing,_ he thinks, dimly. She's a kid and she's strong and she almost killed him. He doesn't wanna kill her. He could. It's not that he's suddenly gone simple, though that could be an excuse. He just can't imagine wasting that life. Those fists. Wasting the way she moves with a knife. Wasting the shot she took. Yeah, she's murdered people. He's murdered people. But she's a kid. And kids get trafficked, get brainwashed. Maybe she wants out. Maybe that's what she's saying, mumbling through tired lips that he can't read. He drops a knife. Maybe. He drops the other knife.

_This isn't the mission._

_To hell with the damn mission._

He drops to one knee, right in front of her. He lifts his hands and she cringes, like he's about to lean down and strangle her. There's a block of stone on her left foot. She can't move. He doesn't trust his smoke filled, dry, buzzing head to speak properly. He taps his chest with one finger. Splays his hands in front of him, palms up, brings them in a little, curving his fingers. He presses his fingers to his thumbs and pushes both hands out towards her. Points at her. Curls his left hand into a 'thumbs up' sign and moves it in a curve to the left. He puts his hands out in front, all fingers pointing down, moves them up and in and around so that when he finishes, his palms face out.

_I want to give you another chance._

She stares at him, the barest tremble behind a slate, ice-green glare. She nods. He licks his lips. Presses a hand to his mouth, then moves it down to rest on his other hand.

_Good._

"Good," he says. His voice creaks on his tongue, like he knew it would. He doesn't hear it out loud, but it creaks. He scrabbles for his knife in the dust, without taking his eyes off her. He pushes his right hearing aid into place and sound returns. She's still breathing shallowly. He's not stupid enough to trust her yet. She plays people. She kills people. But he wants to believe he can save her. "I want to believe I can trust you," he says. "No one else is gonna give you this chance." She lifts her left fist, thumb over fingers, and nods it twice from her wrist.

_Yes._

_This is not the mission, Agent Barton._ He doesn't care. He shoves the stone off her foot, ties her hands behind her back. She wipes a dirty black smudge from her pale, kid face onto her sweater. They stumble to the rendezvous together, covered in dust, and they wait for the jet. They stare at each other over a safe, two metre distance. He should've known he wouldn't kill her. But he doesn't kill if he can save. He's made a decision to trust her. If it gets him a knife in his back, so be it. 

_I hope she don't kill me. I'm overdue a ton of coffee and a nap._

_Coulson is gonna be PISSED._

**Author's Note:**

> It's sooo much easier to write present tense than past tense holy shite


End file.
